by M. D. Massey
As we walked in, a voice called from the back. “Hang on just a minute, I just gotta get cleaned up. I’ll be right out to take care of y’all.”
The voice sounded young, but tired and whiskey worn. I followed Tony’s lead and waited in silence. Moments later, the unmistakable smell of someone smoking a meth pipe came from the rear of the trailer. One thing you could say about the apocalypse was that it was still easy to get drugs. Funny how that worked out; people were smart enough to make drugs, but not smart enough to make a better life for themselves. No wonder we’d ended up like this.
“Big surprise,” I muttered, and Tony gave me a dirty look that told me I should be thankful for what I had. I immediately felt bad, and remembered that this person was just trying to get by in a rough place. Bad choices were bad choices, but I did feel lucky that I’d never had to make them. I decided to keep my mouth shut until we left.
Not long after, a bone thin woman in her late thirties came walking out a doorway wearing nothing more than panties and a worn out and stained silk slip. Her tiny, sagging breasts flopped around inside her clothing as she strolled out, trying to be sexy while flashing us a goofy smile that revealed several missing teeth. Her hair had been braided several days past, and the frayed ends of the braids were already matted and starting to turn into dreads. Should have just gone with dreads, I thought. Headed that way anyway. A lot of people had dreads in the apocalypse, because it was an easy way to wear your hair. There weren’t a lot of barber shops and beauty salons around, so options for hairstyles were pretty limited.
As she stepped into the lamplight, I had to change my guesstimate of her age by a few decades. She was young, but drug use and a hard life had put years on her body and face. I decided that she probably wasn’t more than four or five years older than me.
Now I really felt bad.
She looked up at us and her dreamy, drugged out expression changed in an instant. “Oh, it’s you.” She spoke with a mixture of relief and disgust, as she stooped to pick up a dirty and torn terrycloth robe from a pile of clothing near her feet. She wrapped herself in it and flopped down on love seat that had seen better days before I’d been born.
“Did you bring me any junk, Tony?”
My uncle shook his head. “No, but I can pay you in bullets, and you know that’s just as good.”
She waved a hand and made a sour face. “Not even. Supplies have dried up around here, what with the wolves coming around and stuff.” Her eyes narrowed at something she saw in Tony’s expression.
“You didn’t know about the wolves coming here, did you? Here, hand them over, and add half again to whatever you were going to pay. Talking about the Pack is dangerous business these days.”
Tony crossed his arms and grunted. “Not until you tell me what you know. C’mon, Cinnamon—you know how this works. You talk, and if what you tell me is worth my time, I pay.”
She snorted and a bit of snot came out of her nose. She wiped it away absently with the back of her hand. I noticed that her nails had been polished once, but now they were chipped and jagged, as if she’d been gnawing on them for days. There were also scabs all across the back of her hands, and up and down her arms—and track marks along the inside of her forearms and elbows. Man, this chick was messed up.
“Fine. Sit down and I’ll tell you what I heard.”
Tony’s face was flat and expressionless. “I’ll stand. Talk.”
Cinnamon looked over at me as she pulled out a roll-your-own smoke and lit it up. It was probably ditch weed; a lot of people grew wild marijuana these days. Smelled like a skunk, that was for sure. She gestured with the cigarette at me.
“Maybe your little girl wants to sit down.” She smiled that gapped grin at me. “You want something to eat, honey? I got some noodles from a scav not long ago. They’re real good. I can heat some water up if you like.”
I didn’t smile, but I wasn’t rude, either. “No ma’am, we just ate. Thank you.”
She looked me up and down. “Polite, too. Better watch after her, Tony. Punters’ll steal her in a second.” She coughed up some phlegm and swallowed it, then took another hit of the weed and settled into the couch.
“Alright, this is what I heard. Mind you, this is all just rumors, but I heard the same story from three different customers, so it’s pretty solid.” She puffed on the joint and coughed again for several seconds before speaking. “Rumor is, the Pack and some bigwig from the vamp clan in Dallas are trying to fix a power plant in Austin. Folks are saying they’re trying to make Austin like Dallas—you know, all fancy and stuff. Water, electricity, and things like that.”
Tony rubbed his chin and sighed. “That doesn’t make sense, Cinnamon. There’s nothing in Austin but a bunch of the dead, a few crazy punters and even crazier scavs, and an old dried up nos’ who’s long past his prime. Nobody wants Austin, because there’s nothing left there worth having.” He gave me the signal that we were leaving and turned to walk out. “I think you’re just bullshitting me to get your fix. Next time, don’t waste my time.”
Cinnamon sat up quickly and leaned forward with panic in her eyes. “Where you goin’? You ain’t even paid me yet, and that’s good info, Tony.”
Tony ignored her and kept walking to the door. This was part of the game; never let an asset think they were in charge, always keep them off balance, and always make them think you’re ready to walk away. In other words, screw with them until they’re begging to tell you what they know. I hated it, and what really sucked was that Tony was an expert at this sort of thing.
His hand turned the door knob as she continued. “Wait—wait, wait, wait. One of ‘em said something else—something about a nuke you something. Nook-u-lare. That’s it. That’s the power plant they’re trying to fix. Nukalear, maybe.”
Tony paused, his hand still on the door. “There aren’t any nuclear power plants in Austin. Closest one’s in Bay City, along the coast.”
Cinnamon was getting frantic. I figured she was low on meth. “I don’t know!” she cried as she pulled her hair. “I’m telling you, Tony, this is just what they said. C’mon, baby—if this ain’t good enough, I can take you in back and make it worth your while.” She pulled up the terry cloth robe and slip and spread her legs suggestively. This time, I did barf in my mouth a little.
Tony reached inside a cargo pocket and threw her a plastic baggie that clinked when she caught it. “People I took these off of didn’t need them anymore. See to it that you get something decent to eat too, Cinnamon.”
She was nearly in tears as she dug through the baggie. “Aw, thanks Tony. You’re a real sweetheart, you know? Always take good care of me.” She paused and wiped her eyes. “Sure you don’t want a quickie?”
Tony face sagged a little as he replied. “No, not today, Cinnamon. You take care, okay?”
She was already counting the bullets and sorting the other small packets in the bag. “I always do, Tony—I always do.”
ELEVEN
PIERCE
As we walked away from the trailer, I grabbed Tony’s arm and pulled him up short. “Not today? I seriously hope you haven’t slept with that skank.”
The slap wasn’t enough to really hurt me, but I never saw it coming.
“Watch your tongue, little one, and show some respect,” he hissed at me.
I guess I deserved it, but I could tell that Tony regretted it before he’d even dropped his hand. He’d rarely ever hit me outside of our training sessions, so I knew that what I’d said must have really pissed him off. His face was pained as he glanced back at the trailer.
“I’ll have you know that four years ago, she was a lot like you. Strong, happy, self-assured. That was before her family’s farm got hit by punters. They killed her dad and raped her mom in front of her, then they started in on her. Kept her chained up like a dog, raping her and beating her for months. I found her and rescued her, cleaned her up and tried to give her a new life.
&n
bsp; “But sometimes, people are just broken inside. That’s what this world does to people—it’s what those monsters do to us. Before long, she ran away from the settlement where I’d placed her, and I found her six months later whoring here in this camp.” He pursed his lips and breathed out through his nose, slowly. “Be thankful you never had to go through what she has.”
I rubbed my face and nodded. Yep, I’d deserved that slap. “I am.” I looked back at the trailer. “What was in the other packets in the bag?”
He shrugged. “Makeup, and penicillin. She won’t survive long without the medicine.”
“You’re giving away our medical supplies? Best not let Lorena know.”
He snorted. “She’s the one that sent them.”
“Huh. And the makeup?”
“My idea.” He shifted his pack on his shoulders and scanned around to see if anyone was tailing us. “Let’s get going—I’ve had enough of this place for one day.”
I followed him to where we’d snuck in, and watched wordlessly as he paid off another teen to let us leave unnoticed. My uncle, the sociopathic charity worker. You learn something new every day, I thought as we hopped the wall and snuck off into the night.
Was I pissed about getting slapped? For a moment, but all it took was hearing Cinnamon’s story to set me straight. I’m sure people back before the War didn’t think it was proper to slap a mouthy teen, and it probably wasn’t. But, this wasn’t life before the War. This was the now, the apocalypse, the hard, unforgiving world of us versus Them. I was a soldier first and a child second; at least, that’s how I’d been raised. And Uncle Tony, for all his love and caring, was still a harsh teacher.
It’d kept me alive to this point. Besides, I’d been hit harder by him in training. That slap was nothing. Tony could be a real prick, but he was the closest thing to a dad I had. So I forgave him for being harsh.
Besides, I’d get him back the next time we sparred.
I thought about all these things as we approached our safe house outside of San Marcos. I was lost in my thoughts when Tony stopped suddenly and crouched to examine something on the trail. I almost tripped over him, which would have been a fantastic way to top off all my screw-ups over the last couple of days.
He beckoned me to look, and I crouched down next to him to see what had grabbed his attention. “Look here—’thropes have been this way. Cinnamon wasn’t bullshitting us. Hell and damnation, but this complicates things.”
I scanned the trees around us. “You think they’re still close?”
“No, but these tracks aren’t more than a few days old.”
I got my face down close to the tracks, sniffing them so I could remember the scent, and memorizing every detail so I could be sure to spot them again. They looked a lot like dog tracks, only much larger. More like black bear tracks, in fact. I felt one gently, with the barest touch of my fingertips.
“They’re deep,” I said. “Much deeper than a normal man’s print. How much do these things weigh?”
Tony sniffed. “Smaller ones, maybe 250. A fully-mature secondary, maybe 350 to 400 pounds.”
“A la chingada. What do they eat?”
“Us, if we aren’t careful. Let’s go.” I followed him as he cut off the trail, taking a shortcut that would actually take much longer to reach the safe house. We were taking a risk as it was by traveling at night. The punters kept the area more or less free from deaders, and the vamps they traded with helped as well, but we might still run into stragglers, or even a small herd wandering around in the dark. Heading off the trail would help us avoid the ‘thropes, but it could increase the chance of a random encounter with a deader.
Or a vamp, for that matter. Just because the punters traded with them, it didn’t mean they wouldn’t pick a lone traveler or two off for fun. Punters always maintained an uneasy alliance with Them, and the vamps were fond of reminding their allies who was in charge every now and again.
Once we reached our safe house, there was a complicated two-person system for revealing the entrance. It could be done with one person and a stick, but Tony had set it up this way to avoid accidental discovery, and it was faster with two people. Good safe houses were hard to find, and even harder to make. Tony had set this one up himself, which was a lot of work to waste by letting some pinche punter or scav see us tripping the lock. So we always made double-sure we were alone before we approached any safe house.
I walked up to the building, which had once housed offices for the local government, and stood next to a door which had been boarded shut. Tony walked over to a rusted out shell of a car nearby, sat in the driver’s seat, and pressed the horn. An electric buzz and a click from behind the boarded door resulted. I hit a hidden latch at the bottom of the door and pulled up on the boards, revealing a small opening that we had to crawl through to enter. I held the door open and waited for Uncle Tony to approach. He entered first, and I backed in with my crossbow at the ready.
Once inside, we walked silently through the halls and down a set of stairs to the basement level. We ducked under and around vents and ducts that belonged to a long-forgotten heating and air conditioning system, behind which was a metal door that was hidden from view, unless you knew it was there. The large HVAC unit that hid it had originally sat several feet from its current resting place, but Tony had somehow moved it to hide the door. He said the hardest part had been making the floor look like it had never been disturbed. Some grey paint and concrete patch mix had taken care of that. Once we were behind the unit, Tony produced a key for the deadbolt and door knob, and we entered the safe room.
Inside was a cramped but cozy cinder block room with two cots, a table, and a small oil lamp. A locked metal cooler rounded out the furniture, which we used to keep the rats out of our emergency food rations. Tony lit the lamp, and I took the bunk on the left, farthest from the door.
“Sorry I slapped you. But what you said was disrespectful and unnecessary.”
“I know. Sorry I said it.” I sat on the cot and watched him as he fidgeted with the covers on the bed.
He continued facing away from me as he spoke. “I hope you know that I would never—I would never take advantage of a girl like that.”
“I know. I was just pissed at you, for the thing you did with the ghoul.” I took my boots off and laid back on the bed, staring at the ceiling. “We’re good, Tony. I mean, we’re family. Besides, it didn’t even hurt. I deserved it.”
“I won’t do it again.”
I didn’t know if that was true or not. Men like Uncle Tony weren’t exactly predictable, even in the best of times. He was absolutely reliable, but he could lose his temper in an instant. I often wondered if it was due to the experimental version of the serum he’d taken; but if it was, he’d never said. And I’d never asked.
“I know,” I lied. I stared at the ceiling a long time before I drifted off to sleep.
TWELVE
WOLVES
We both woke up early the next morning, not saying much to each other. We normally didn’t converse much on the trail anyway, simply because it was good field discipline. Or, at least, that’s what Tony said. I thought it also had a lot to do with the fact that he just wasn’t much into conversation. Before sunup, we both had our gear packed and headed out into the dark.
We were on the move before first light, having locked up the safe house securely and removing any trace of our presence or passing. We headed northwest from there, following a trail that ran parallel to old Highway 35, the main feature that marked the area known as the Central Texas Corridor. The Corridor was dangerous territory, even for punters. Especially along the highway, because deaders had a way of congregating in the towns along the freeway. Tony thought it was because they kept some of their memories from when they were still alive, and that caused them to stick close to these abandoned towns and cities.
Whatever the reason for it, there were a butt-load of them in the Corridor. We avoided the highway as much as possibl
e and stuck to the caravan paths and deer trails that dotted the countryside, as well as paved roads that went through the decrepit and abandoned neighborhoods and communities that bordered the Corridor. We’d traveled about eight miles north of San Marcos and were within sight of what was left of the Austin skyline when Tony stopped and motioned me off the trail. I did as he indicated without question, since hesitation could kill, and because obeying him immediately had saved my life more times than I could count on one hand.
Tony melted into the brush with me, and motioned for me to continue backing away from the trail. I was expected to use absolute stealth in these situations, and that’s what I did. After we’d backed off the trail a good ten meters, he signaled that I should stop moving and hide. I slipped under some low-hanging cedar branches and hugged the ground in a crouch.
A few moments later, we heard a soft conversation coming from the trail north of us. I picked up four sets of footsteps, but three were different than any I’d heard before. Three of the voices were different as well—more deep and course, as if the speakers had dry throats, or like they were clenching their teeth.
As they came closer, I could just make out one of the gruff voices. “And you say these humans were asking about us at your camp?”
A normal human voice responded. “Yessir, Mr. Skull. They was asking that whore Cinnamon ‘bout y’all.”
“And what did she tell them?”
The person with the normal voice coughed. “Not much, just about what y’all are doing with that nuke stuff. But she got it all wrong. It’s nothing to worry ‘bout.”
The first voice responded with a menacing growl. “I’ll be the one to decide what I worry about, slaver. Don’t tell me what to do. Ever.”
The man who owned the second voice gulped audibly. “Yessir, I didn’t mean nuthin’ by it.”
I could now see them through small gaps in the trees. I leaned and stretched my neck to try to get a better look at them, but Tony motioned for me to sit still. I only caught a glimpse of four sets of legs. One was human, wearing jeans and combat boots, and the three others were heavily muscled, covered in brownish-gray hair, and jointed at the knee in the opposite direction.
